


Just Friends

by CatsBalletHarveySpecter



Category: Jopper - Fandom, Stranger Things (TV 2016), Stranger Things - Fandom
Genre: El knows Hopper Loves Joyce, Highschool Jopper with a twist, Jopper, Post Season 2, prom 59, that time the kids ask about joyce and hoppers yearbook, will and el have questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsBalletHarveySpecter/pseuds/CatsBalletHarveySpecter
Summary: El is convinced that Hopper has feelings for Joyce and wants to know more about the prom photo of Hopper and Joyce she discovered in Hopper's yearbook.(Post Season 2)
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	Just Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Hello! I'm new(ish) to writing in the stranger things fandom and would love to hear your thoughts!

  
  


**Just Friends**

On a dim Sunday evening, three months after Eleven closed the gate, she finds herself laying on Will Byers bedroom floor colouring while Hopper and Joyce prepare dinner for them. She and Hopper had been coming over for Sunday night dinner every night since the closing of the gate, and she and Will had become fast friends. 

“El, can I ask you something?” Will says as he fills in a heart on his colouring page. 

“Sure.”

“How did you know that you love Mike?”

“I-” she stutters and pauses so that she can think of the correct phrase. “I don’t know,” she admits.

“It’s like the fluttering in your stomach,” she adds in explanation. 

“Oh. Okay,” Will nods. “Was it scary to tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you love him.”

“I have to… tell him?” she asks. 

“Yeah, when you love someone, you’re supposed to tell them ‘I love you’,” Will explains. 

“But, Hopper loves your mom and he doesn’t tell her.”

“Huh?” Will says. “Hopper doesn’t love mom.”

“Yes he does,” El nods.

“How do you know that?”

“Because he smiles a lot when we come over. And sometimes he talks to her on the phone at night.”

“El, that doesn’t mean he loves her. They’re friends, just like you and I are friends. There’s different types of love. The romantic kind, like you and Mike, and the friend kind, like you and me.”

“He loves her, the romantic kind.”

“I don’t think so,” Will remarks. 

Annoyed, El gets up and straightens up her dress before marching towards Will’s bedroom door, a determined grin on her face. 

“Where are you going?” he calls after her. 

“To show you.”

El finds Joyce and Hopper in the kitchen, standing side by side peeling potatoes over the sink. They’re too busy laughing to hear her come in so she clears her throat and they both turn around to greet her. 

The laughter was something new, she’d noticed. For a while, whenever they came to dinner, the adults would sit outside while she, Will and Jonathan watched a movie or played with Will’s crayons. Lately, she noticed that Joyce seemed happier, which made Hopper seem happier. She liked Joyce’s smile. She liked it so much that the week prior she told Joyce this and Joyce hugged her. 

“Hey kiddo, food will be ready soon,” Hopper tells her. 

“Do you love Joyce?” She asks, point-blank before Will has a chance to stop her. 

Hopper’s face pales and he grips the countertop with his knuckles while he fumbles for a response. Meanwhile, Joyce goes back to peeing potatoes, leaving Hopper to fend for himself. 

“El,” Will hisses, “You can't just  _ ask _ that.”

“It’s alright,” Hopper says to Will. He was used to his adopted daughter's blunt questions. Despite how hard he wished she wouldn’t have asked him this  _ particular  _ question in front of Joyce, he does his best to remain calm and answer her. It was a work in progress, but he really was trying to be a good father figure for El. “Joyce and I are friends, of course I love her.”

“But I mean do you  _ love _ her,” El asks again, this time emphasizing the word  _ love,  _ which causes Hopper’s cheeks to flush and Joyce to snort a chuckle behind him. 

Will, who is far more intuitive than El, interjects, “Sorry, we were just talking about how you can love your friends and how that is different from romantic love. I was telling El that you and mom are friends.”

“Your mom and I, we’ve been friends a long time, kid.”

Hopper takes a seat at the kitchen table and motions for El and Will to do the same. He knows El isn’t likely to drop the subject and he wants to get the conversation over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. 

“How long?” 

Hopper steals a glance of Joyce, who nods and turns to join them at the table. 

“I was about your age when we met,” he explains. 

“Wait,” El’s eyes grow wide and she rises to her feet. “Is Joyce the girl in the picture?”

“What picture?” Hopper asks, staring at her with an uneasy curiosity. 

“The one in the book with all the pictures,” she explains. 

It takes Hopper a moment to realize El is referring to the highschool yearbook that is sitting on the bookshelf in the cabin. Joyce stares at Hopper quizzically and waits for him to explain. 

“She found my yearbook,” he explains with a shrug. 

“What picture?” Will asks El. 

The conversation was not going the way Hopper pictured it would, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He doesn’t dare look at Joyce, too afraid her eyes would meet his. They hadn’t talked about their past since they’d become friends again. Sure, there was that year after he moved back to Hawkins where they periodically chatted, and there was that  _ one _ incident, but never once had either of them brought up what happened between them. 

Flash forward a few years to the year Will went missing, and they still hadn’t said much about it aside from a few jokes. They’d certainly grown closer in the past couple of years, but neither dared remind the other of what could have been. Hopper feared that if he looked at Joyce, he’d be transported to a lifetime ago and he wasn’t sure that was a trip he wanted to take with their kids eagerly looking on. 

“There's a picture of my da-” El pauses to correct herself. She hadn’t outwardly referred to Hopper as her dad yet, though she’d been doing it in her head for months. “Hopper and a girl in a pretty white dress.”

“Yes,” Hopper answers the question that was asked what feels like decades ago. “That’s Joyce.”

“I want to see!” Will whines, “Mom, do you have a yearbook?”

Joyce looks at Hopper, her eyes scanning his for a sign that she should pretend she no longer has a copy, but she finds none. Instead, she finds him softly smiling at her in a manner that could only be described as delicate, honest, and Jim Hopper. He’d been looking at her like this since highschool and sometimes, though she would deny it if anyone asked, she would catch him smiling at her exactly like this when he thought she wasn’t looking. He’d changed a lot since highschool, but his smile was the one thing that remained constant. 

“I can try to find mine,” she offers, getting up and wandering off to her bedroom when Will nods excitedly. 

Hopper’s not sure what causes him to change his mind, but this suddenly seems like the perfect time for a trip down memory lane. He thinks it’s because he knows this might be his only chance to do so. Surely, the kids would ask a few questions and get bored, leaving him and Joyce to reminisce as they finished preparing dinner.

Joyce returns to the table carrying an old bound book, and both Will and El excitedly sit up. She passes the book over to them and reclaims her seat next to Hopper. They flip the book open and El eagerly begins searching for the picture in question, turning through the pages so quickly, Joyce is surprised she can even tell what’s in them. 

“It’s been a  _ long _ time since I’ve pulled out a yearbook,” Hopper nerves chuckles. 

“Is this you Chief?” Will asks, pointing to a photo of Hopper dressed in a wrestling uniform. 

“That’s me,” he nods. 

“What are you wearing?” Will giggles. 

“I was the captain of the wrestling team,” Hopper explains. 

“W-restle-ing?” El sounds out the unfamiliar word. 

“It’s like fighting, but you don’t try to hurt anyone,” Will explains to her. 

“Here!” El exclaims excitedly, pinning down the page with her thumb. “This one.”

Joyce and Hopper steal a glance of one another before turning towards the kids, El pointing to the photo she so accurately described before they retrieved the book. It was clear to Joyce that El had spent a large chunk of time over analyzing the photos of the book during her year in solitary at the cabin. She hardly remembered the photo herself, that is until El brought it up. Looking at it now, she remembered that day like it was yesterday. 

_ Winter, Prom of 59’ _

She went with Lonnie. He took Chrissy Carpenter but bailed halfway through the dance. She found him outside leaning against his dad’s GTO smoking cigarettes after Lonnie ditched her for the bottom of a bottle and some former seniors that were throwing a party at Lover’s Lake. 

Joyce remembers dragging Hopper back inside the school gym and demanding he dance with her because her favourite song was on. He complained, but obliged, and that’s when the photo was taken. 

Now that she thought about it, the photo was taken by Bob. 

She squeezes her eyes shut and winces, but feels a calming, steady palm on her leg. She looks over to find Hopper staring at her with concern and she forces a smile, silently communicating that she was fine. 

It isn’t an unpleasant memory. Prom, Bob, even Lonnie, it’s just overwhelming in a surprising way. 

“Mom, is this you?!” Will asks.

“It is,” she nods. 

“You look like a princess,” El grins across the table at her. 

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Wait, this says prom. Mom, were you and Hopper dating?” Will asks. 

Hopper and Joyce exchange a glance and silently decide to let Joyce answer the questions. “No baby, we weren’t dating. We were just best friends.” 

_ Best friends that fooled around and also briefly dated but broke up before prom and that’s why we took other people. _

“See El, I told you. They love each other like best friends.”

El looks between Hopper and Joyce, back down at the photo and then repeats the cycle. She nods to herself, slightly more convinced that Will is right but still internally certain that Hopper loved Joyce. She doesn’t bother to argue, and instead agrees with Will and asks if they can resume colouring before dinner. 

Hopper excuses them both and leans back against his chair, swinging the yearbook around so that it lay between him and Joyce. 

“My god, this feels like another lifetime ago,” he mumbles, looking through the prom photos. 

“Feels like it was yesterday to me,” she says softly. She leans forward and reaches for the page, her hand accidentally brushing against his in the process. She blushes and pulls back her hand while she waits for him to turn the page. 

There, in black and white, was a photo of her and Hopper after school. She was sitting on the hood of his dad's car, dressed in a pair of oversized jeans and a leather jacket, her high school staple. Hopper had a cigarette dangling between his lips and she was looking up at him with an adoring look, laughing at whatever ridiculous statement he had just made. 

“Just a pair of dumb kids,” he remarks, turning the page back to the prom photo El was enchanted by. He had to admit, it was one hell of a photo. “Do you remember this night? You dragged me back into the gym all because that pop song I couldn’t stand came on and you wanted to dance.”

“I wasn’t the one hiding outside my own prom,” she points out with a short laugh. 

“I was avoiding you and Lonnie,” he admits and a silence fills the space between them. 

“Yeah, well, you never were his biggest fan.”

“You deserved better.” 

“You mean, I deserved you?” she challenges, the boldness of her statement shocking him. 

“Gosh Joyce, no. You deserved so much more. Than Lonnie, than me. You deserved more than anyone in this hell hole could offer you.” 

Desperate to keep things light-hearted, Joyce smiles, “we did have fun this night, didn’t we?”

Hopper takes the hint and smiles, “If you count horrible dancing as fun.”

“You weren’t horrible.”

“I wasn’t good either.”

“Do you remember when Chrissy came back from wherever she’d run off to?” she giggles.

“You mean how she tried to fight you but backed down the moment you stepped towards her? How could I forget. She always was jealous of you.”

“She had no reason to be.”

“Joyce,” he says, his hand has fallen next to hers and he allows his palm to cover hers, “she had every reason to be. I had a massive crush on you.”

“Hop,” she rolls her eyes, “we dated for like two weeks before deciding it was a terrible idea. We practically broke up before we even dated.”

“And?”

“You didn’t have a crush on me,” she scoffs.

“I did.”

“Now I  _ know _ you’re lying,” she laughs, reaching over to smack his arm with her freehand. Joyce hadn’t realized that she and Hopper had somehow gravitated towards each other and she now found herself sitting mere inches away from him, her right hand secured firmly beneath his. 

Hopper opens his mouth to speak when the door flings open and Jonathan calls out, announcing that he’s home and sorry that he’s late. 

He walks into the kitchen to find his mom and Hopper, laughing. Joyce gets up upon hearing Jonathan and returns to her position at the sink where she continues to peel potatoes. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Jonathan apologizes again. 

“No worries, we’re also running behind, go wash up and you can help,” Joyce instructs. 

Jonathan pauses to stare at the open yearbook on the table, where Hopper is now smoking. 

“Mom, is this you?”

“Um, yeah,” Joyce calls over her shoulder. 

Jonathan nods, accepts what he’s just learned and veers off to his room where the stereo immediately begins to play. 

“You do realize he thinks we went to prom together now, right?” Hopper states, rejoining her at the sink. He turns so that his back is pressed against the counter and offers her his cigarette. 

Joyce accepts it and hastily inhales before coughing and handing it back. 

“Eh, let him think whatever he wants. It’s irrelevant anyways. Besides,” she hums, “it’s not completely inaccurate.”

He cocks his head and raises an eyebrow as she continues, “we may not have gone  _ to _ prom together, but …” she trails off.

He remembers vividly. He offered to drive her home and the next thing he knew they were in the backseat of his car, tangling tongues. They never ventured past second base, but that night was ingrained in his mind for years to follow. There were few instances in which Hopper could recall every detail, but that night was one of them. He still remembers how nervous he was before he kissed her that night. He’d only experienced an adolescent nervousness like that twice in his life, first on prom night, and once again when he returned to Hawkins after Sarah; he was drowning his sorrows at a local pub where Joyce happened to be. The pair got to talking and one thing led to another, old habits died hard and they found themselves in the alley alongside the bar. 

He’d forgotten about that night at the bar. He didn’t see or hear from Joyce until Will went missing years later and he wonders now if she regrets it. He and Joyce weren’t exactly friends, but they were never something more, despite several opportunities to  _ be _ something more. Maybe they were destined to be friends. To love one another in a strictly platonic way. 

But he doubts that. He kissed her the night of their senior prom. He kissed her the year he came back to Hawkins and he wanted to kiss her right now while they stood preparing dinner in her kitchen. He was a fucking idiot. What were they doing? Sitting here across from their kids, playing house, stepping around one another like they lived in glass houses, when really they lived in shitty worn down brick houses in Hawkins, Indiana. He loved her. He was head over heels, without a doubt in love with her, and he suspects a part of him always had and always would be. 

He loved her in highschool but was too much of a coward to try and make things work between them, was he really going to fall victim to the same cowardly tendencies decades later? He knew that she wasn’t ready, that she was still grieving. But he had to do something to show her that he’s here, that he’s willing to wait. 

Hopper abruptly marches over to the radio and turns the dial until a soft melody fills the kitchen. 

“Hop, what are you doing?” Joyce asks. 

“Dance with me,” he says, extending his hand. 

“In the kitchen?”

“Absolutely,” he smiles, taking her in his arms and pulling her flush against his body. She wraps her arms around his neck while his settle on the small of her back and he sways them with the music. At first, she's reluctant and rolls her eyes at the sheer ridiculousness of the entire situation. He plays along and teases her, laughing at the way she steps on his feet and crashes into him. At some point during the song, the facade slips and she rests her head on his shoulder. He continues to rock them, leaning down to place a chaste kiss on her forehead before resting his chin above her head. 

If this was the only way he could be with Joyce right now, it would just have to do. If you’d have told him back at senior prom he’d be dancing with Joyce Byers while preparing dinner for their kids, he would have laughed. But here they were, happily wrapped in each others arms, enjoying the moment. 

From down the hall, El and Will peer out into the kitchen from behind the door frame. El leans over and whispers into Will’s ear. 

“See, he romantic loves her.”

  
  
  



End file.
